


The First Fallen of Ragnarok

by Tammany



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Brotherhood, Dysfunctional Family, Father-Son Relationship, Kid Loki, Kid Thor, Mother-Son Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-13
Updated: 2014-05-13
Packaged: 2018-01-24 13:33:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1606937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I'm a bit out of my usual fandom here, but I'm feeling very Loki-esque and Asgardian the last few days. This is Frigga and Loki and Odin and Thor, and how things went wrong. The mythology is Marvel to some degree, but it's also a mess of straight Norse, as the straight Norse in an odd way explains more dysfunction than Marvel does. </p><p>Hope you all like it, even if I am fairly new over in this fandom.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The First Fallen of Ragnarok

Today I watched Odin, Allfather, husband, lord, the Grey One, astride across his kingdoms, with his boys in a line behind. Poor straggling little boys, not yet grown, a gaggle of awkward hope, pipping and peeping, striving to keep up with him. He never slows, not even for the youngest. Too fast, he is. Too impatient. Too sure it’s good to shame them now, forcing them to reach for what they can’t yet grasp…

He overstates his wisdom, that husband of mine. Oh, he loves to think himself wise, but he never was, and I fear sometimes he never will be. You’d think nine nights hanging on the World Tree, the loss of an eye, hours spent pent up talking with that pitiful corpse-head, Mimir, drinking the blood of Kvasir in the mead of Orthrorir….

Well. You’d think it would all eventually resolve into wisdom, not mere knowledge, wouldn’t you? So much loss, so much pain and sacrifice, so much suffering and death—wisdom ought to be the least of the rewards of so much sorrow. But, no....

They say I have the gift of prophecy. They overstate, just as Odin overstates. I have the vision, yes—but the vision is such a weak thing. There are but three things I have seen clear—Balder’s death, and Loki’s culpability. The fall of Asgard in the last days of Ragnarok, when flames will light the sky so bright that all nine worlds shall see the show. And I once saw the day Loki turned from Odin, beginning it all.

My poor lads. My dear, poor boys. Balder, the beautiful one, the one true child of my loins. Then, of course, all Odin’s bastard getting:  Tyr, as bad as Odin with his love of war. Thor. Hermod, Heimdall, Vidar, Valli, Bragi and Hoder.

You see? Odin was not wise. Passionate, yes. Wise? No. Except, perhaps, in choosing me. You do not want to do the reckoning of Odin’s other lovers. It is tangled and complex, and hints at madness. Let old gods lie. And lie. And lie.

Loki was hardly the first.

Sweet Loki. Doomed Loki. Brilliant, brave, beautiful Loki.

They are all my sons—all of them Odin handed casually into my keeping. Thor, sent out into the world from my own mother’s womb—even he I love. Even he is my son, as well as brother. I held them each, and nursed them at my breast, goddess-giving, Allmother. I kissed their brows. I counted their tiny toes.

My lovely, lovely boys.

Odin, today—he swept through the vast courts of Asgard, his cape streaming behind him, the boys a straggling pack panting behind.  Thor was red-faced, shouting at his father to slow down. Balder attempted sweet words and dulcet phrases. Each had his way. Each fought to either keep up or hold their father back.

Then Loki, my clever, subtle Loki, solved the puzzle. He tripped on a stair, stumbled, barked his knees, cried out as the other boys raced past him, taking his place in the middle of the pack. Then, with a rage of despair, he changed, and a black mare, gleaming like midnight at midwinter on a night of stars, rose up and raced ahead, hooves ringing on the stone of Asgard’s paving.

I was standing on my balcony, looking down, and the sight was bonny and fair—so lovely I clapped that sweet mare on in her headlong race to take the lead. It was a solution worthy of Norns. Wise—or half-wise. Wise in solution, less so in understanding Odin’s wrath.

The Allfather was not pleased. He halted, for the first time that day, face red, single-eye glaring, his ravens flying around him, Thought and Memory gone mad.

“How dare you?” Odin’s voice rang out, echoing through the halls, sounding in all the courts of Asgard. My Loki, my sweet black mare sat back on her heels, hooves sliding on the polished stone as she scrambled to stay upright. The Allfather would not have it: he drew his fist back and struck her, hard, a wheeling blow against the side of her head, and she slid and fell, legs flailing.

The other boys laughed. I cannot blame them: they are so small and they had lost and lost all morning, as they raced behind Odin, trying to win his love, trying to win his approval. And they know so little of magic—they are more of Odin’s shaping than mine, even my beautiful Balder. It is only Loki who’s followed my ways, and learned my magic—learned so well that even now, he slips his shape in an instant. They resent him. They resent when he changes to a sweet, fresh-faced girl and joins me and my handmaidens in the baths at night, singing our songs and playing the games the women play.

Thor has tried to reprimand me, silly boy, standing straight and frowning mightily, every inch his father’s son. He put his fists on his hips and rumbled at me. “Mother,” he said, with such somber mien, “It is not meet that you let Loki in with the women just because he can play a trick with magic. He’s a boy.”

“No,” I explained, “when he plays that trick, he is a girl. A real girl. When she is grown she will give me grandchildren, from her own womb. She will shout out, and the handmaids will wipe her brow, and Gefjon will serve her as midwife in my stead.”

“Where will you be?” Thor asked, easily distracted from his own thesis.

“Gone,” I said.

He scowled. “Good,” he said, thinking I meant I would be otherwise occupied, too concerned with my own matters to bother to serve as midwife to my wild giant-child, my little magic fosterling. “Good,” he said again, then added, “You pamper him.”

He has heard the words so often from Odin’s mouth. According to the Allfather, I pamper them all, make them soft, steal them from their rightful place at his side—or, more accurately, their place struggling behind him, unable to keep up.

Odin Allfather hit the mare so hard she fell, legs churning the air, then kicked her. She screamed, her mane falling like rivers across the white marble floor. “Get up,” he shouted, “Get up, unless you want to be a warrior’s mount come Ragnarok, rather than a warrior.” He used a term for a riding beast more often used to discuss a man and a woman lying together…and not in love, but in mere lust. A woman taken and ridden and tossed aside when more manly activities present themselves. “Get up, or get thee from my sight,” he shouted, and strode away. The boys ran after him, giggling and tossing the rude word back at the mare, who lay like a horse half dead of colic, panting on the floor.

When he was gone she struggled to her feet—my lovely Loki, man-child and maiden, mage and warrior, my one child of my wisdom as well as my love. She shook herself and flicked her flanks with her long, thick tail, as though making flies of Odin’s words, of her brother’s insults. She trotted, then, slowly, then faster, then fast beyond believing, wide-wings forming as she leapt from the balcony overlooking Ginnungagap. I cried out, amazed. She was beautiful, my little black mare; beautiful as she flew with wide wings and curved pinions out over that roil of chaos and creation.

“Why?” I asked Odin when he came in from his business. He threw aside his cape, raked his fingers through his hair and beard. “Why did you strike Loki?”

“He cheated,” he snarled. “I need warriors, not mages.”

“You have warriors,” I shouted, angry, though I love him with all my heart. “They are all warriors. Is it too much for just one to also be a mage and a wiseman?”

“He is not wise,” Odin said. “If he were wise he’d not beat his brothers with tricks and magic, but on their own terms.”

“You mean he wouldn’t beat you. You can’t bear to be beaten at all, much less in both physical strength and in wisdom—and Loki, clever Loki, did both. He understood a little boy can’t keep up with a grown man in his prime—but a black mare can. He used his wisdom to find his strength.”

“And may it ever do him as little good as it did today,” Odin snarled. “Foster or no, he is not of my making. Nothing I have done, nothing I do marks him. He is yours alone--yours and the damed Frost Giants who begat him.” And so he left our rooms, striding away, angry, never thinking he’d cursed his child—and doomed them both.

He is not wise, my Odin. Nine days on the tree, the loss of an eye, and still he is not wise. The wise do not curse their own legacy.

When he was gone, I wept for Loki—the first fallen of Ragnarok.


End file.
